After Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was among the many MAGA Republicans who aggressively promoted the Big Lie — claiming that the election had been stolen from Trump and aggressively looking for possible ways to keep Trump in the White House. One of the fellow Trump supporters Meadows worked with during that period, according to CNN reporter Zachary Cohen, was Republican operative Phil Waldron.
"As allies of then-President Donald Trump made a final push to overturn the election in late-December 2020, one of the key operatives behind the effort briefed then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about his attempts to gain access to voting systems in key battleground states, starting with Arizona and Georgia, according to text messages obtained by CNN," Cohen reports in an article published by CNN's website on September 26. "Phil Waldron, an early proponent of various election-related conspiracy theories, texted Meadows on December 23 that an Arizona judge had dismissed a lawsuit filed by friendly GOP lawmakers there. The suit demanded state election officials hand over voting machines and other election equipment, as part of the hunt for evidence to support Trump's baseless claims of voter fraud."
